With “Now Feel This” Concert Livestreams, Skullcandy Wants To Get Back To Basics (GUEST)

Headphone manufacturer Skullcandy got its start by focusing on musicians and music fans, and with its yearlong Now Feel This concert series, it hopes to return on its original promises, but without losing sight of what’s on the horizon.

“We started as an audio company focusing on music, so we’re really getting back to our roots,” said McKenna Taylor, Skullcandy’s global brand manager, told AListDaily. “We’ve gotten distracted a bit in the past.”

A series of 29 concerts over the course of a year, Now Feel This shows will star smaller artists and take place in low-headcount venues to give attendees a more “physical” experience, tying the live experience with the “haptic bass” features on Skullcandy’s headphones. For those unable to attend, the brand will livestream the concerts on its microsite.

“We don’t just want you to listen to your music, we want you to feel it,” McKenna stated. “We wanted to transfer that to more emotional responses and connections on a more personal level.”

Though a music brand sponsoring a concert can hardly be considered groundbreaking on its own, (the company has even hosted ad-hoc music livestreams for the past two years) Skullcandy’s Now Feel This program marks a committed, long-term effort by the brand to integrate more completely into its customers’ daily lives.

“We want to give these emerging artists the platform to share their talent and music with our fans, who we’ve identified as hungry for the latest and the newest and the upcoming,” Taylor added. “We’ve focused on creating holistic touchpoints with our consumers and our products and our initiatives.”

Part of Skullcandy’s holistic strategy includes more diverse content offerings than just concerts. Starting on May 18, the date of the first Now Feel This concert, the audio brand will launch a podcast series featuring exclusive interviews by the bands performing.

Overall, the campaign is focused more on branding than sales. McKenna claimed that the metrics Skullcandy will monitor tend more toward social sharing and time spent watching content over sales conversions.

If the series gets enough traction, Skullcandy plans to run more concerts and expand its podcast as well.

“We’re helping our fans stay on the cutting edge of music,” McKenna stated. “It’s going back to our heritage of music as well as looking progressively forward.”